WWLA mentorship rules
Waterloo Women Leading Academia (WWLA) will provide mentorship opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students that are looking to make a career in academia and create a sustainable work-life balance at the same time.
Members: We are a socially inclusive group that is welcoming of cis, trans, racialized, Indigenous, Indigenous, LGBTQ+ and non-binary people. We expect mentors and mentees to behave and communicate in a manner that is respectful and thoughtful of their peers. Mentors can range from Faculty to graduate student level based at the University of Waterloo.
Time commitment: The expectation for this programme is that mentors and mentees must commit to spending at least 15 hours over the course of a term. This roughly equates to one hour per week of communication.
Communication: Based on mutual agreement, you are expected to set your own terms for communication – whether it is through instant messaging services like Microsoft teams, email communication or video calls through Skype or Zoom. However, please make sure to reply in a timely manner, typically within one week.
How does it work?
The WWLA mentorship programme will include faculty-student mentoring as well as peer-mentoring opportunities (senior graduate students mentoring new students). WWLA requires interested mentors and mentees to fill out the online form. New applications will be considered on a rolling basis for the first year and once we have a significant number of applicants, we will then match mentors and mentees (via email) based on common interests.
Housekeeping rules:
- Mentees must respect their mentor’s time. Essential mentee behaviours include setting up an agenda ahead of meetings and assuring that mentors have adequate time in advance to review any related materials or topics of discussion.
- If there are any issues with the mentor-mentee relationship, either of them can get in touch with the WWLA team and be asked to be reassigned. However, mentors are expected to make sure that the mentoring is kept on track, open for honest dialogue and tries to avoid misunderstandings with the mentees.
- Maintain confidentiality early on as this is an important ingredient to trusting each other.
- Try to create some benchmarks for mentorship goals – what is it that you want at the end of the mentorship? How will you both achieve it? Make sure to check-in with each other and yourself about the value this mentorship opportunities gives you.
- “Mentors must refrain from giving all the answers, and mentees must be able to take direction” - Think of this initiative to either help someone as a mentor (pay it forward), or to learn from someone as a mentee (learn to accept direction/grow from healthy criticism).